Thursday, March 22, 2018

Nearly everyone is cheering the #MeToo movement. Nearly everyone
believes that a frank and open conversation about sexual harassment is going to
put a definitive end to sexual harassment and usher in an era of comity between
the sexes.

All we need is enhanced awareness of the problem accompanied
by a series of men who have had their lives destroyed for harassing women in
the workplace.

It is an article of secular faith that once we see a problem
all we need is for everyone to become aware of it… and then, the problem will
go away. Yet, we have already undergone five decades of enhanced
consciousness raising about relations between men and women, in and out of the
workplace, does not seem to have registered. It does not seem to have registered
that these conversations have produced Harvey Weinstein and Louis CK et el., and
not vice versa.

If you would like a more common sense approach, you can ask
yourself what good can come from endless graphic public descriptions of men
harassing and assaulting women. Does this make it more likely that men see
women as colleagues, or does it force them to focus on the dangers that lurk
beneath? Does it tell us how strong and empowered modern women are or does it show us how weak and vulnerable they are?

We already understand that many men, as a direct consequence
of the auto-da-fes, will be far less
likely to hire women, to support women, to mentor women, to have lunch or
dinner with female staff and so on. #MeToo will probably end up damaging women’s
prospects in the workplace. Lest we overlook the obvious, men and women do not
just interact in the workplace. Breaking down the bonds of trust between the
sexes is not going to facilitate good relations between the sexes. Stoking a
hostile cultural environment serves no one’s interests.

It does not matter to those who are happily throwing themselves
into the current round of male bashing, but we must recognize that trying to solve a problem by raising consciousness often makes the problem worse. At the least, it gives
people ideas. Not everyone is sufficiently woke to draw the correct conclusion.

And yet, tracking the fallout from this public orgy of
recrimination is anything but easy. Thus, we need to be somewhat circumspect in
drawing conclusions. For all we know, the effects might have been produced by a
different cause, but we regretfully feel obligated to point out that among high
school students—who are certainly aware of the #MeToo movement, but who are
morally underdeveloped—the open and graphic conversations about sexual
harassment seem to have given boys new ideas. It seems to have produced exactly
what it was designed to suppress.

The New York Post reports on the increase in sexual
harassment in New York City high schools:

The
number of city students charged with sex crimes in the fourth quarter of last
year jumped by 73 percent from the same period in 2016, according to NYPD
school-safety data.

During
October, November and December, 26 students were charged with rape, sexual
misconduct or forcible touching — up from 15 sex raps in the same months in
2016, the data said.

Three
were charged with rape, 14 with sexual misconduct (five prosecuted as
felonies), and nine with forcible touching (a misdemeanor offense), police
said.

Of course, these are only the incidents that were reported.
The true number is surely much higher:

Students
at the complex said sexual horseplay was common, but they were under peer
pressure not to report it.

“My
mother says if a guy does something I don’t like, tell him no or tell her or
tell a teacher,” said one 16-year-old girl at International HS at union Square.
“But it’s hard. You don’t want to seem like you’re not cool or can’t take a
joke, so I ignore it.”

A
15-year-old girl from the school said, “Somehow a boy gets in his head that
it’s OK to treat girls a certain way. Somewhere, someone maybe encouraged it
and that’s wrong. That’s a big problem.”

The
NYPD logs school crimes only when officers or school safety-agents are
involved.

The state also tracks a less severe “other sex
offense” category involving “touching another student on a part of the body
that is generally regarded as private,” among other misconduct.

Those offenses rose from 2,311 in 2016 to 2,604
last year.

Is this part of the fallout from #MeToo? Without making a definitive statement, I would merely note that it counts among the risks.
People should table some of their arrogance and understand that public
discussions of sexual harassment are more likely to produce more sexual
harassment, and not just among high school students. And, if they produce more hostility between men and women... people who want to hurt other people can surely find more socially acceptable ways to do so.

3 comments:

The problem is that there is no agreed upon standard of what constitutes "sexual harassment". There has never been one, and there never will be one, because if one could be formulated, then it would challenge the undisputed power of feminists in such situations. Thus, the extreme ends of Harvey Weinstein masturbating into a potted plant (and I'm still wondering why he would think any woman would find that attractive) and some poor 19-year old sophomore at some third-rate (but still outrageously expensive) small liberal arts college traumatizing one of his classmates for having the temerity to ask her to have lunch/coffee with him are treated identically with maximum punishments imposed. And if that weren't bad enough, here's the story of what happens when the accusation is made by a third (fourth, or fifth party) against the will of the so-called "victim".

Sooner or later, there will be revenge violence, as there has been random violence by the likes of Elliot Rodger, Adam Lanza, and now Mark Anthony Conditt. The poor schmuck sophomore will decide that if his life was ruined on a whim, he at least should be tried in a court for an objective crime in which he will be first presumed innocent.

Agreed. The #MeToo movement fails because it presumes justice can occur in the public eye or in the courtroom.

Women who want power and responsibility themselves, if they want to be treated as equals, must commit learn assertiveness skills, learn how to escalate and deescalate conflict, learn basic self defense skills that can stand up to physically stronger people, and learn the spiritual warrior skill in not taking things personally. They should see that HR is not their friend, but an enabler to a false narrative that tattling is the first line of defense in adult misbehavior.